John Backus R.I.P.

The great computer scientist John Backus has died at age 82. He invented Fortran, the first popular high-level language for programming computers. Fortran improved productivity by a factor of 20, compared to assembly language. And he lead the team that implemented the compiler for it, one of the first and best such programs. And he invented (or co-invented) the standard notation for describing computer languages. I wrote my first computer program in 1962 or 1963 using Fortran II for the IBM 1620.

I got to meet John Backus at SDC in the 1970s. He'd been hired for a few days to give a talk and consult with us. His work at that time was about the functional programming programming language called RED (short for reduction). In such languages, routines have no side-effects, only results. It made formal analysis of programs much easier. But it was hard to see how to do practical programming in this way.

John Backus was a very kind and gracious man, with none of the arrogance of so many lesser computer scientists. We had a good chat about my programming language QX which I invented and wrote a compiler for at SDC.

Years later, I taught compiler design at USC, using his notation, of course. And years after that, I was development manager for the last version of Fortran released by Microsoft. Also MASM, the assembler program that high level languages like Fortran had made obsolete.

Garrison Keillor's most recent column euligizes John Backus, lamenting how this great man who did so much good, was less well known than blowhard politicians and celebrity party girls.